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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#311

Post by relaxing »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #26
washadjeffmad wrote: post #24

I remember how out of control the lawsuits got by the mid-2000s. A friend had to drop out of college and move back home over some multi-million dollar claim on behalf of the RIAA that his family "settled" for $40K. It wasn't even clear he was responsible (the lawsuit was based on IP), but he was scared and admitted to using "file sharing services", and that was that. I'm still disappointed that laws against barratry…

What rights did you used to have?

You had the right to time shift, move between formats, excerpt and edit for academic and research purposes, etc.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#312

Post by relaxing »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #166

Buying music (singles or albums) was super expensive in 1999. It was unfair for listeners as well as artists. Napster suddenly made it 'free'. I remember thinking, if CD's were not so ridiculously expensive and i could pick the songs on it, i would just buy them instead of spending money on data traffic time/bandwidth. Today, we pay much less and the artists are still paid, while we can choose exactly what to listen…

> the artists are still paid

No, no, no, no. Not at all compared to the glory days of the industry CD boom.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#313

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

slyall wrote: post #253
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) What kind of domain is that? Looks like a domain for a tabloid or something 2) It redirects me to https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/location-not-allowed which says "Your geographic location is not allowed access". Here is a mirror for others who happen to not live in the US (or whatever country it's restricted to): https://archive.is/AYgwj

Paramount is very keen on region restrictions. I have a hobby of watching/sharing TV/Movie Trailers and 90% of the time the Paramount ones on youtube will be region locked to the USA. Hence many don't get shared to a forum that is 80% US residents..

> Paramount is very keen on region restrictions

Bit too much it seems, as I live in one of the countries mentioned in the article where this documentary is supposed to launch...

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#314

Post by shmuppet »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. In 100 years iTunes may be dead, but there will be some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC. Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

High quality piracy, especially for music, can convey a lot of social status. Many of the “pirate clubs” online are gated behind presenting your own vault of gems: lots of lossless FLAC files and maybe some rare foreign cd rips.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#315

Post by noman-land »

dtx1 wrote: post #215
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

My personal feeling is that Spotify and youtube et. al. killed music piracy. I'd rather pay a small monthly fee and have access to an always up to date music library then torrent everything artist by artist. But that only applies because spotify has basically all the artists i like and want.

"Always up to date" doesn't tell the whole story.

Spotify is cool but I have playlists where half the songs are missing because some invisible licensing deal expired and the songs disappeared from reality.

With Spotify you are renting art. The moment you stop paying rent, your library disappears. Sometimes even before that.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#316

Post by noman-land »

zulban wrote: post #135
_fat_santa wrote: post #100

Napster was a little before my time, though I fondly remember torrenting when I was a kid and oddly enough, it was a small time scam that got me into it. I remember when I was a kid (maybe 13 or 14) I really (and I mean really) wanted to play Grand Theft Auto. My dad picked up a copy of GTA San Andreas for me about a year prior but after seeing the violence and language he forced me to take it back, that put the tast…

Doesn't sound like a scam. You wanted to buy a fish and they gave you a fishing pole. And for just 30$? Some online training today costs many thousands of dollars. Indeed you must be young because you think online tutorials must be free and instructors charging for their work is a scam.

I dunno. If I went to the grocery store to buy a fish for dinner, I wouldn't be amused by receiving a fishing rod instead.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#317

Post by jamiek88 »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #219
exe34 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

already, Disney has been censoring past episodes not even based on today's sensibilities but it seems purely based on keywords. there's an episode of the suite life of zach and cody where zach pretends to have dyslexia in order to get extra time in his exams, and near the end of the episode he gets busted and they have a thoughtful conversation about how it's unfair and hurts the people who need the extra time, and h…

Disney is only slightly better about nuking old “offensive” content than other providers. Many times they just gave an unskippable “this is culturally offensive to some” text and call it good. For example the old lady and the tramp has that “we are Siamese” song, which I guess is offensive… at least they still let you watch it. Hulu on the other hand just pulls shit. For example they pulled my favorite it’s always su…

The creators of always sunny pulled that themselves just fyi. They decided as artists that they weren’t cool with it and I think that is their right as creators, personally.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#318

Post by SunlitCat »

_fat_santa wrote: post #100

Napster was a little before my time, though I fondly remember torrenting when I was a kid and oddly enough, it was a small time scam that got me into it. I remember when I was a kid (maybe 13 or 14) I really (and I mean really) wanted to play Grand Theft Auto. My dad picked up a copy of GTA San Andreas for me about a year prior but after seeing the violence and language he forced me to take it back, that put the tast…

What Spotify does (at least for me) right is enabling me to be able to listen and download music from all over the world without any strange market segmentation going on (at least not that I see much).

I wish that would work for movies and games as well, but that's still a long way to go.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#319

Post by coretx »

bawolff wrote: post #308
coretx wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sybil attacks if i'm not mistaken ;-)

Sybil attacks are like DoS attacks. They are never going away fully. All webservers are vulnerable to DoS attacks and yet in practise it is pretty rare for major websites to go down because of them despite their simplicity. But there are strategies to mitigate sybil attacks. Requiring hashcash style proof of work to participate in the network, increase state requirements to participate in the network, basing node id'…

Sybil attacks are not the only category of vulnerabilities found. As your argument indirectly points out, the problems are quite fundamental in nature and therefore won't be resolved by a random developer but maybe by a bunch of mathematicians. ( I know that the Tribler people worked on these a lot )

What you call strategic decisions are in fact choices made on a operational level. In case of your context example, this is something the adversary is very well aware of. Some decades ago, the did not only poison various DHT-like systems but even went as far as uploading jailbait torrents to the Piratebay, ordered hits on people via the US state department and got people extradited from non treaty countries in exchange for FTA concessions. Striking a killing blow is not in their strategic interest but might become a operational choice at some point in the future. In this scenario, the cost/benefit analysis is a no-brainer and that leaves us exposed and controlled.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#320

Post by washadjeffmad »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #26
washadjeffmad wrote: post #24

I remember how out of control the lawsuits got by the mid-2000s. A friend had to drop out of college and move back home over some multi-million dollar claim on behalf of the RIAA that his family "settled" for $40K. It wasn't even clear he was responsible (the lawsuit was based on IP), but he was scared and admitted to using "file sharing services", and that was that. I'm still disappointed that laws against barratry…

What rights did you used to have?

More coherent private ownership, a healthy public domain, more robust fair use, and greater non-commercial protection, for a start.

I consider all of those to be erosions of public rights and benefits.

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